Blogging off-limits at Games

Olympics - Countdown to Turin

February 5, 2006

The biggest potential Olympic controversy may not be an ominous positive test for performance-enhancing drugs.

No, we have a far more evil:

Blogging.

The Japanese Olympic Committee is telling athletes competing in Turin not to open Web logs, because the Olympic Charter bans athletes' journalist activities during competition, and violators will be disqualified.

The paranoia seems a bit extreme, considering this innocuous blog post by Kentaro Minagawa before he finished fourth in the men's World Cup slalom in Wengen, Switzerland, on Jan. 15:

"This evening, I am relaxing as yesterday's event is finished. I want to win, too. I want to slide down faster than anybody else."

The International Olympic Committee began regulating athletes' journalistic activities in 1992 more strictly when track-and-field star Carl Lewis reported his impressions to a newspaper by mobile phone as he entered the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

"Bringing in cameras during opening and closing ceremonies also becomes a problem if the cameras are for individuals' commercial activities," IOC Vice Chairman Chiharu Igawa told reporters. "Therefore, some regulations are needed. With the development of information technology, there is enough possibility for unexpected conflicts."

A solution or a problem?

It seems we are bound by federal law to include Bode Miller in any Olympic-related material.

This week's news flash involves a report on ESPN that links at least four members of the U.S. ski team, including Miller, to controversial orthopedic specialist Milne Ongley.

Although Ongley has been credited by some with saving careers, he also has been banned from practicing in the United States and now works in Mexico.

Ongley injects patients with something dubbed the "Ongley Solution," which he says is a mixture of dextrose, glycerin, phenol and distilled water.

Ongley says the solution "causes the growth of new tissue by the reproduction of similar cells" that supposedly aids in an athlete's recovery from injury.

Miller's involvement no doubt sends a curious message after he suggested in a recent Rolling Stone interview that Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong took performance-enhancing drugs.

"Right now, if you want to cheat, you can: Barry Bonds and those guys are just knowingly cheating, but there's all sorts of loopholes," he told the magazine. "If you say it has to be `knowingly,' you do what Lance [Armstrong]and all those guys do, where every morning their doctor gives them a box of pills and they don't ask anything. They just take the pills."

Skeptics may wonder if "the solution" is a loophole.

By the numbers

The U.S. Olympic Committee's final official roster includes 211 athletes, 85 of whom competed in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. It marked the most successful Olympics for the United States, which snagged a record 34 medals.

"This is America's Team, and we are confident this outstanding group of athletes will make our country proud," USOC Chairman Peter Ueberroth said in a statement.

Italy's 185-member team, its biggest ever, will be the third-largest in Turin, behind the Russian (242) and U.S. contingents.

Miracle No. 1

Although our infatuation with Olympic hockey seems to begin and end with the 1980 team, ESPN Classic will give us another group of guys to wrap our patriotic arms around Monday night.

First Miracle, a documentary by Bud Greenspan, will chronicle the story of the gold-medal-winning 1960 U.S. Olympic men's hockey team. The hourlong show will air at 8 p.m.

The story lines follow a team that, like the 1980 "Miracle On Ice" bunch, defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union and powerhouses Canada and Czechoslovakia.

Old school

USA captain Chris Chelios, 44, will be the oldest American to compete in an Olympic Winter Games hockey tournament. He joins fellow 2006 Olympian Keith Tkachuk as one of only two American hockey players to be chosen to four Olympic squads.

"We feel that Chris is not only a tremendous player, but also a terrific leader," said Don Waddell, general manager of the 2006 U.S. men's hockey team. "For us to have success, Chris is going to have to be a big part of it."